In that case, a Taco Bell employee spit in a trooper’s food, and the trooper sued. Restaurant Management of Carolina, L.P., 146 N.C. I am not aware of a North Carolina case directly on point, but the court of appeals came quite close to ruling that spitting is an assault in Phillips v. That statute is not an assault statute and applies only under limited circumstances, so it does not really resolve the “timeless question” with which this post began.
14-258.4, malicious conduct by prisoner, which makes it a felony for prisoners to direct bodily fluids or excrement at government employees. Based on this body of law, I can imagine an argument that spitting on another would amount to a battery and therefore to an assault.įinally, many readers will already be aware of G.S. See generally Jessica Smith, North Carolina Crimes 113 (7 th ed. This is so even if the victim is not placed in fear of bodily harm. However, it is worth noting, as I did in this prior post on a different topic, that any unconsented touching seems to be a battery, and that any battery is an assault. I can imagine an argument that spitting is not an assault because it is an attempt to insult rather than an attempt to injure, and because being spit upon would not reasonably create a fear of bodily harm. 63 (2004) (defining an assault as “an overt act or an attempt, or the unequivocal appearance of an attempt, with force and violence, to do some immediate physical injury to the person of another, which show of force or menace of violence must be sufficient to put a person of reasonable firmness in fear of immediate bodily harm”). Rather, it relies on the common law understanding of assault as an attempt to injure another that puts the victim in fear of harm. North Carolina doesn’t define assault by statute. I don’t think anything important turns on the presence or absence of mucus.Īssaults generally. According to the Urban Dictionary, “loogie” is “a portmanteau word, or alteration and combination, of ‘lung cookie.’” I am a little skeptical, because that explanation would seem to result in “lookie,” not “loogie,” and because of early uses of the precursor term “louie,” which sounds nothing like “lung cookie.” Third, although the Sixth Circuit referred to loogies, which by common understanding involve a combination of spit and mucus, this post considers spitting more broadly. Second, some readers may be interested in the etymology of the term. First, I think the accepted spelling is loogie, not lugie, as noted in this blog post. I’ve been asked this question several times, and in today’s post, I set out to answer it. Several years ago, the Sixth Circuit noted the “timeless question whether “spitting a ‘lugie’ towards someone, by itself, constitutes an ‘assault.’” United States v.
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